I used to love Tori Amos back when I was a teenager, and I still love those first three records, but her output since BFP - her last genuinely great album - has been very, very patchy and she comes across as someone who did too many drugs, too much trauma, and burned out way to fast.

Now refresh my memory. Was she the one that caused all that trouble by making a sandwich with Jason Kidd and Jamal Mashburn when they were with the Mavericks? Or was that Toni Braxton? I always get them confused.

Leonard Slatkin was conducting the National Symphony in Carnagie Hall about 6-7 years ago and a very irritating couple had a good conversation going in about the 3rd row. Just before the last movement of (I can't remember the piece but Beethoven I think)the symphony the woman's cell phone went off. Everyone looked at her, mad at her anyway for her talking, and she just didn't move. Finally Slatkin turned around and said "Madame if I answer that for you should I tell them you are busy talking and will call back"?

I've never understood how it is that so many people miss that the very first line of that song announces that Amos "never was a cornflake girl." Indeed, I'd say there's a pretty good chance Amos thought they were acting exactly like cornflake girls, and booted them out to allow some raisin girls to take their place.

Of course, the irony to that song is that Amos has suggested in interviews that raisin girls are multicultural, open-minded, tolerant (and presumably liberal) people, while cornflake girls are judgmental and self righteous. Which is funny because she also acknowledges writing the song in horrified reaction to a book about female circumcision - a reaction that only a cornflake girl could have. A raisin girl couldn't react thusly; a raisin girl would have to take the same position JohnTaylor88 does, which is to tolerate and respect this other culture instead of being judgmental about it, to be careful not to impose our own self-righteous conceptions of right and wrong on them. Only a cornflake girl could puff herself up with moral outrage and say "f*ck this other culture, this is violence against women and f*ck those who defend it." It's the raisin girls who are the enablers and defenders of leaving other cultures to themselves. So it's a glorious piece of pop music, but to engage with it seriously it to leave it in tatters, intellectually.

I'm just picturing you realizing what your first comment said before the qualifier. I'm not sure why this strikes me as funny.

Well, it was a purposefully set-up joke, so thanks. I'm not sure why your comment would be mean; I've dated prettier redheads than Tori Amos. Though not as talented. I haven't much dated talented women, which maybe is the problem, now that I think about it.

Only a cornflake girl could puff herself up with moral outrage and say "f*ck this other culture, this is violence against women and f*ck those who defend it." It's the raisin girls who are the enablers and defenders of leaving other cultures to themselves. So it's a glorious piece of pop music, but to engage with it seriously it to leave it in tatters, intellectually.

I know you want me to step up and defend female circumscision. But I don't defend female circumscision.

I will just say that female circumscision is usually done by women to women, and when mothers try to break the cycle, daughters are kidnapped by aunts and female cousins and taken to grandmothers who perform the ritual. So it's not a patriarchal ritual; it's a matriarchal one. And it is often of more recent vintage than is claimed (i.e., it very often isn't really a long-standing tradition, but rather newfangled mumbojumbo).

Given the above, the ideal person to defend female circumscision would be a woman who willingly underwent a superficial genital cutting (leaving the clitoris intact, but slicing the clitoral hood, which inhibits sexual pleasure when too thick, anyway). I don't think any of your arguments work against her, and against her reduce to little more than xenophobic paternalism.

Mort/John said..."I know you want me to step up and defend female circumscision. But I don't defend female circumscision."

Then condemn it, John. I won't hold my breath on that, though, because you've previously counselled us to tolerate (and yet more offensively, respect) cultures that practice unspeakable violence against women on the basis of multiculturalist moral relativist dogma. My favorite religious-themed joke has to do with an atheist who dies, and (doubtless surprised to discover he was wrong) asks God, "why do you tolerate so much evil in the world?" God replies, "why did you?" You can pat yourself on the back at how sophisticated and open-minded this makes you, like a good raisin girl should, but as far as I'm concerned, on a moral level, if you won't condemn such violence against women, you wouldn't be much more guilty if you wielded the knife yourself. Good luck convincing St. Peter to take a different view.

"[Y]our arguments ... reduce to little more than xenophobic paternalism."

Then condemn it, John. I won't hold my breath on that, though, because you've previously counselled us to tolerate (and yet more offensively, respect) cultures that practice unspeakable violence against women on the basis of multiculturalist moral relativist dogma.

Actually, I never said "One should respect cultures that practice unspeakable violence against women on the basis of multiculturalist moral relativist dogma". I do recollect calling you a paternalistic bigot for insisting a Harvard-educated Iraqi female politician was stupid for thinking polygamy might have benefit for the women of her nation, given its shortage of young men. I don't see what a woman advocating for polygamy has to do with violence against women, nor do I think polygamy necessarily is incompatible with our common-law: Uganda was a British colony and has plenty of applications of English common law to property disputes regarding polygamy. So to be as tolerant as I am, I need not be a multiculturist or relativist, either.

As for your logic, I'm not a binary thinker. There is no "condone or condemn" to the irreducibly complex argument that I made. Women carry out female circumscision, in many cases the practice is voluntary, and in some forms it isn't genital mutilation, but rather less painful and potentially harmful than a clit piercing (i.e., just slicing of the clitoral hood). I don't see what there is to condemn about a woman choosing to pierce her clit, so I certainly don't see what there is to condemn about a woman choosing to cut her clitoral hood.

If I were to do that, I imagine I would condemn every woman wearing a pair of earrings as a shameless whore whose soul has escaped her body. Which would make me a sexist, self-righteous prick.

I have realized that this thread has gone far enough afield that my comments (in relation mostly to the post itself, and some of the earlier comments) are out of place, and could even be interpreted as really inappropriate.